try to save but it doesn't come off the rug
try to build a wall that is high enough
it's all boiling over
all boiling over
try to save your house
try to save your songs
try to run but it follows you up the hill
it's all boiling over
all boiling over
your loved ones
your loved ones
a normal conversation
a normal conversation
you should have took me out when you had the chance
you should have took me out while you had the chance
all the rooms renumbered
and the losers turned away
don't turn away
don't turn away
there were ten in the bed
and the little one said
roll over

The musical basis for the song, 'Try To Save Your Prize', was included in the Radiohead.tv episodes in 2003:

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An audio element, that can be heard in the final track, was used in one of the animations on theeraser.net:

An early draft of lyrics, titled 'Try To Save Your Prize', can be seen in a pdf file from theeraser.net, and contains several of the lines from the finished version:

Six lines from this early set of lyrics could be seen in the 'scrapbook' section of radiohead.com since 2004:

Thom: "In the last song, 'Cymbal Rush', the first bit you hear is something I had for three years, one little note. I could hear the melody in there straight away. But if you played it to anyone else without me singing it, you'd think, 'What's he on about?'"

Thom: "The two songs... 'Cymbal Rush' is all based around like... I mean, it's all done on laptops and it's all computerized. But there was enough of an essence to the song to get it across today. But it was a bit... It just took a while to work out as to how to do it."

Thom: "The guys are talking about including some of the songs in the set. They seem well up for it. At the same time, we've got a lot of new songs of our own which we need to sort through first. I don't want to make it a big priority because it would be a lot of hard work to reinterpret stuff like that. It could become a major headache. But Jonny and I did a version of 'Cymbal Rush' - that's my favourite - at a benefit show recently [May 1st, at the Koko in London]. It came out quite messy, but we'd only had two days to rehearse it."

The song was arranged quite differently for its few live performances. Thom and Jonny premiered 'Cymbal Rush' at a Friends Of The Earth benefit gig at the Koko in London with Thom playing piano and Jonny on Ondes Martenot:

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This recording from late June 2006 comes from a KCRW broadcast:

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In 2006 The Field remixed 'Cymbal Rush'. This version was released as a download in december 2007 before appearing on a series of three 12" vinyl remix EPs in january 2008. Later that year the Eraser remixes were also released on CD in Japan:

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During the In Rainbows tour in 2008, 'Cymbal Rush' was one of three songs that Thom would play on his own at the piano to open the second (and sometimes the first) encore:

It took Thom three years following the release of The Eraser to put together a proper tour based on the album. Recruiting Nigel Godrich, Flea, Mauro Refosco and Joey Waronker to form the band, the group played a first set of shows in october 2009 and another in april 2010, initially under the name "?????", since Thom had not yet named the project "Atoms For Peace". The tour ended with a solitary gig in august 2010 in Japan. Each night, the main set would consist of the The Eraser played in its entirety. During this period, Thom also played the song in Cambridge at a Green Party benefit and the 2010 Glastonbury and Big Chill festivals:

A new full band arrangement of this song was premiered on october 2nd 2009 at the Echoplex in Los Angeles at the first gig of Thom's then unnamed band, consisting of himself, Flea, Nigel Godrich, Joey Waronker and Mauro Refosco: